Miscellaneous thoughts and discoveries on genealogy, family history and family photos.

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

This will be another unusual post for me—merely a ramble of sorts. I generally think quite a bit, prior to writing a new blog entry and I try to create something of real value. This generally means that I write pretty long posts. It also means that I spend a huge amount of time either researching/preparing the content for the post, or in just writing it and then later editing it.

But as I read other blogs, I notice how many bloggers write regular, or even daily, posts. As a reader of those blogs, there is something very comforting about hearing from a blogger at regular intervals. And it doesn’t bother me that many of the posts are things that I’ll quickly skip over. Eventually they write something that catches my attention in a deeper way and I read that particular post more attentively.

So it’s not true that a blog post has to be 2,000 words long to be of value, or has to be the product of some project that has taken a number of weeks to complete. I would still like to work on those project and write those posts. But I think I’ll also try to mix it up with shorter posts that are merely miscellaneous thoughts and ramblings. I might even manage to talk myself out of editing and rewriting these shorter posts.

In the end, I guess I have several goals when it comes to blogging. One is to provide some information, or tools, that are of lasting value to family historians and genealogists. But also important is my goal to just have a conversation with the genealogical community. I know that I really appreciate seeing regular posts written by my favorite bloggers. It makes me feel like I have an ongoing connection with them, whether or not I read every post. And I’d like to be on the other side of that equation occasionally. It also matches my real-life personality. I like to talk.

One final comment before this post becomes an example of irony, as it gets longer and longer. There is great value in both the long form—huge 2,000 word articles that teach—and the short form—several paragraph posts that lay out a quick set of thoughts. But there is even value in the shortest form imaginable. I’m a huge fan of Twitter (www.twitter.com/spsexton) and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll see that I “publish” many tiny little thoughts throughout the day. Twitter enforces a message length of something like 140 characters and I find it quite easy to present a little thought in even so few characters.

So if I have any sort of New Year’s resolution at all (I normally make my resolutions in April, on my birthday), it would be this—to embrace not only the super-short form of Twitter and the super-long form of well-planned blog posts, but to also write some shorter blog posts over the next year. I look forward to the ongoing conversation on the blog. And I hope that I’ll also see some of you on Twitter.